Language Bombers

Yashaswini was a teacher for sometime before becoming a full-time journalist and she has told us that she has encountered several types of students. Many of them use language very inappropriately and sometimes these usages are hilarious. Even I have encountered such individuals, who do not care about how they use words and language. I call them language bombers because they throw bombs made up of words and phrases that do not follow the spelling and grammar rules! I call this act as language bombing!

Language Bombers:

The inspiration for this article was a doctor from the emergency department of the hospital we go to for Dad’s treatment. One day, Dad had sustained some injury just below one of his eyes. We went to the hospital and before discharge, the doctor wrote on the paper – blunt injury to the chickbone (sic)! Our family comes from a highly educated background and we know that the paper was written about the treatment of a human being – my Dad. In contrast, if the paper was given to someone, who had a fledgling knowledge about the English language? At the same time, if people in the doctor’s position, make mistakes like this; they can also make mistakes in the names of diseases/health condition and medicines.

Anyways, the next example that I would like to highlight is the usage – I am proud on you. How can someone be proud on someone? While there are no specific rules in the usage of prepositions like ‘on’, the sentence logically should use the word ‘of’ saying – I am proud of you. Some years back, I did the interview of an artist for a print magazine. Unaware that she was dealing with a senior journalist, the young PR told me to send back the edited interview. In the raw bytes from the artists, the PR had written – proud on you, which I had corrected to proud of you. The girl rewrote the interview and changed the expression back to proud on you! Obviously, I changed it back to proud of you before sending it to the editor of the magazine.

To be continued…